Ep. 112: Fixing Free Fecal Water Syndrome - Diet, Fiber & Gut Health Solutions for Horses Part 2

Episode Notes

On this Part 2 episode of the Beyond the Barn podcast, host Katy Starr, Dr. Burt Staniar, Associate Professor of Animal Science at Penn State University, and Dr. Kelly Vineyard continue their discussion about how diet plays a role in free fecal water syndrome, including:

• Why forage should always be the foundation of your horse’s diet
• How different fiber sources (like beet pulp, alfalfa, and grass hay) impact gut health
• What “forage quality” really means and how hay maturity can affect digestion
• Practical feeding strategies to apply when you can’t control your horse’s hay (e.g. when your horse is at a boarding facility)
• The truth about supplements (and when they’re actually worth it)

If your horse struggles with free fecal water syndrome, or even if you’d just like to better understand equine gut health, hindgut function, and forage nutrition as the foundation of your horse’s diet, this episode is jam packed with practical, science-backed insights you can start applying to support your horse.

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, be sure to go back to episode 111 for a deep dive on fiber and digestive health before getting into this episode!

🎧 Listen now on the Beyond the Barn podcast

Have a topic idea or feedback to share? We want to connect with you! Email podcast@standlee.com

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Helpful BTB Episodes to Reference – 

• Ep. 111: Not All Fiber Is the Same - Understanding Free Fecal Water Syndrome in Horses Part 1
• Ep. 098: Feeder Style, Dominance, and Stress in Group-Fed Horses – What the Research Says
• Ep. 054: What is Leaky Gut in Horses, and Can It Be Prevented?
• Ep. 045: Why Skipping a Hay Analysis Could Cost More Money in the Long Run with Sarah Fessenden
• Ep. 047: How Properly Balancing Your Horse’s Diet Can SAVE You Money in the Long Run!
• Ep. 003: Why Horses Need to Eat Fiber
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*Views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Standlee Premium Products, LLC.*

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Connect with Dr. Staniar:

• University Website
• Email - wstaniar@psu.edu

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Read full episode transcript

Katy Starr (00:01):

Hi, I'm Katy Starr and you're listening to Beyond the Barn. Join me on this journey as we bust equine and livestock nutrition myths and sit down with some of the most intriguing experts from across the country. We'll also take you behind the scenes of how premium western quality forage is grown and brought to your favorite farm and ranch retail store. I'm so glad you're here.

 

Katy Starr (00:27):

Before we dive into part two, let's quickly catch everyone up on what we covered in the first half of this conversation. In Episode 111, we took a deep dive into the role of fiber in the horse's diet and why horses are really designed to live on forage. Dr. Staniar walked us through the idea of effective fiber, how the physical structure of fiber actually changes chewing, digestion, and gut function in the horse. And because it's all connected, we also defined free fecal water syndrome, what it looks like and why it's not the same thing as diarrhea. So, if you haven't listened to part one yet, which is episode 111, go listen to that first. How big of a role diet plays in all of this when it involves free fecal water syndrome in horses?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (01:16):

It plays a huge role. Number one, spoiler alert. But number two, and this is based on my experience in the field working with a lot of horse owners, and I just want to point it out here that your first go-to nutritional tool should never be a supplement when it comes to fecal water syndrome. We have invited Dr. Staniar on here to talk about fiber because that's what your first go-to, is to look at the type of fiber, the structural, the chemical fiber, the different types of forages that you have available to you, and using fiber as a tool and fiber as a management tool as your first line of defense when you talk about managing this condition. So, that's not to say supplements don't have a place they absolutely can, and we'll talk about that. But don't start there. I wanted to say that don't start there.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (02:09):

I actually think, and again, I'm going to preface this by saying I think I saw this. Okay, so maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But I think that one of the contributing factors, or a possible related factor was two horses having free fecal water syndrome were horses that were on greater than three different supplements.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (02:30):

Interesting.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (02:30):

So, this is in addition to most of their diet. So, that doesn't mean if you're feeding three supplemental your horse is going to have free fecal water syndrome, but as you start to get into three or more supplements that you're feeding on top of what your base diet is, which is going to be the forages and the concentrates or grains of some sort, you start to wonder whether that's really necessary and how those additional supplements may be contributing to a a problem there. So, that's something to think about. And I, and I agree with your, your point about supplements. I really think as a horse owner, as somebody that has cared for horses, I think educating yourself about what you feed your horse, educating yourself, what you know. So, you listen to this, you're like, oh my gosh, if I heard them say fiber one more time, I think I'm going to throw up , but going back again, I'm sorry, I am getting a little bit older, but I love books.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (03:19):

And so there are a lot of really good books on equine nutrition on feeding horses. I was just reading a book by Dr. Montgomery written on the thoroughbred from 1967, I think, you know, which is a classic text on feed. Well, he has a small section on feeding thoroughbreds in there. But you can learn a lot by going back. I mean, we have been caring for horses for a very long time. And so I think going back and reading a lot about these things, for example, I brought up earlier beet pulp as a potential tool or thinking about timothy hay as a potential tool or thinking about whole oats as a potential tool. I bring up all of those because those are some of my favorites as a nutritionist, although my students would tell you that orchard grass is my favorite grass, but, but all of these are plants that we feed to horses.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (04:07):

And I get it, I am kind of a nerd, that's why I'm a faculty member I guess, or researcher or scientist. But I get excited about understanding all the different fibers that are in them and thinking about how those are being digested by the horse. How they're being chewed by the horse and digested and impacting their gastrointestinal tract. So, I want to start to understand what is the difference with beet pulp or orchard grass hay or alfalfa and using those as tools. And I think one of the things that's important that I'm saying is it's forages are kind of where I'm starting with things. So, when I say a forage, I'm talking about either a grass or legume. That's what I think of as a forage. So, I'm thinking orchard grass, alfalfa, timothy, coastal bermuda grass, all these sort of grasses or legumes. Then I begin to move towards other things like beet pulp or soy hulls or whole oats.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (05:04):

And then I move to some of the commercial concentrates. So, I might talk about some sort of pelleted diet. Notice one of the things that has changed is both the chemical aspects of the fiber in each one of those, but also the physical aspects of the fiber as I moved from that whole forage with a very long and a lot of physically effective fiber to the pellet that's going to have little tiny fibers and not much physically effective fiber. But those two might have exactly, I can create a pellet, I can make a pellet that has the same fiber fractions as the timothy hay that you feed. And they're going to have exactly the same. And those all have their place. So, you know, again, we're all familiar with some of the more chopped forage products or the cubed forage products or the pelleted forage products. All of those are an opportunity that's a way of mixing those different fiber fractions.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (06:01):

So, it's not that they're good or bad, they're all just different. And so for each different horse, I can suddenly begin to think, you know what my horse, let's say is at a boarding facility and they have round bales that we feed all the horses and it's kind of a mediocre grass hay. Well then I know that I have another tool that's available to me. They're going to say to me, I'm sorry Burt, we're not going to buy 600 bales of some hay that you want to feed. This is what we've got . Well, okay, I can supplement or compliment my horse's diet with maybe another, I can't certainly feed all of his forage, but I could compliment it with, maybe I want to feed him alfalfa cubes or one of those compressed bales or a pelleted beet pulp or something like that. That is another fiber source that is mixing in with that. You know, the round bales that he's getting that actually would be beneficial if my horse was dealing with free fecal water.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (06:55):

And this scenario is so common, what you're speaking about, you know, you've, you've got a horse at a boarding facility and you don't have control over what forage they're getting, but you might have control over kind of what their meal fed, for example. And I love how you point out that's where practically speaking, I might start there. Okay, if I can't change a hundred percent of their forage, because really that's what we're saying. If your horse has fecal water syndrome, the first place to start is looking at your forage program and what adjustments may need to be made. And I think I want to point out here too, just from the, there's a bagged forage or actually a pelleted forage from Standlee that's called Forage Plus Gastric Support. It includes all these components that you're talking about. So, that's why I want to mention it.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (07:42):

It's alfalfa based and beet pulp. So, two very good sources of digestible fiber, but it also has some kind of more like gastric support technology. It's got a gastric buffer in there. It's got some prebiotic and probiotics in there for gut health. It's got some butyric acid and and zinc, ButiPearlthat also helps with the integrity of the intestinal barrier. So, it's kind of a product that's meant for horses with issues, but maybe you only feed five pounds of that a day to get some of that effective fiber, or maybe not effective fiber is the right word. Get some of the digestible fiber into the horse where you have control over it. Same could be said for timothy cubes or alfalfa cubes. Just something that has consistent quality that is more easily digestible for the horse than what he's eating. Maybe that kind of mediocre round bale that's out in the paddock if you don't really have control over eliminating that completely, you know, bringing in something that's going to be a little bit more easy on the digestive tract is kind of a good way to say it. Another thing, oh go ahead.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (08:46):

Before you leave that, and as I came on here, we, we said we were going to keep things relatively simple, but what I want in people's heads as they go to bed at night and are dreaming about free fecal water syndrome.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (08:58):

Yes. Okay, .

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (09:00):

So, I want you to realize how fascinating your horse's gastrointestinal tract is. And so many of the things that you're bringing up Dr. Vineyard are related to the health of the cells that are living there that are lining that gastrointestinal tract. So, why do horses get free fecal water syndrome? We don't know the specifics, but it probably is some sort of impact on the health of those cells. And again, I'm a nutritionist, but I think this is one of the most fascinating organs in the body. The gastrointestinal tract, the lining of the horse's, gastrointestinal tract, those cells, it's thought that they turn over once every seven days. That means those cells are growing.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (09:41):

That's incredible actually.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (09:42):

And going away and turning over. And they're doing all of that while at the same time managing to bring nutrients into the body, the body needs and keep nutrients out of the body or molecules out of the body that shouldn't be in there, protect from all the microbes that live in there, protect against all the fiber that's coming down through there. I mean, it is truly amazing what these cells have to do. And so I want you to realize that everything that you're feeding is impacting their health and wellbeing, and they've adapted over 40 million years to eat a certain diet. Now we change that diet, we do things a little bit differently and we change the, you know, things. It's not totally shocking that we can upset those cells and create a situation where maybe they're not able to absorb the water quite as well or they're excreting more water or the pH is changing somehow and that results in this free fecal water syndrome. So, it's truly an incredible, incredible tissue and how it functions.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (10:42):

Well, it's safe to say anything we can do to sort of nourish that epithelial tissue is a good thing for really any horse, not just those that have free fecal water syndrome. There's another common recommendation I like to make too when I'm faced with this issue in the field. And it's to pull a hay sample if you can. Especially if you have a large, you know, you have a hay barn full of hay and you're going to be feeding this for at least another month or two. If you're only purchasing hay that lasts a week or two, it's probably not going to do you much good to pull ahay sample and looking at the quality of your hay and specifically looking at the maturity and we're not doing it. I'm sure there's probably a past Beyond the Barn episode on hay analyses. Is there Katy?

 

Katy Starr (11:29):

Yes. Yeah, I think we have one or two that we've discussed.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (11:32):

We can maybe refer to that if you really want to go down that rabbit hole of hay analysis. But I can't stress enough how important that can be because if you're having free fecal water syndrome in a horse and then you go pull a hay sample and your hay sample comes back as low quality, maybe it's not considered horse quality. Maybe the relative feed value is below 75 and that is a clear first signal that let's address this, get some better hay that the horse is able to deal with better, digest better. If you ignore that, that's never going to go away. Right , that's always going to be a problem. But if you're pretty confident that you're feeding really good quality horse quality hay, certainly changing some of the different fiber fractions you're offering, you know, switching up from orchard grass to a timothy grass or if you're feeding no legume in your horse's diet, no alfalfa, maybe introducing some alfalfa. It really comes down to experimentation, doesn't it, Dr. Staniar like kind of being your own nutrition scientist with your horse when it comes to finding maybe what types of fiber that this horse responds best to.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (12:47):

Yes. So, many things. You said, Dr. Vineyard.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (12:51):

.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (12:52):

I want to highlight a couple of things. One, I think that horse owners, while experimentation is good, I think working with your veterinarian and if you have an opportunity working with a nutritionist can be helpful. Equine nutrition is a complicated business in reality. And so the only thing that stuck out to me is the experimenting with your horse's diet too much. I think that people should be careful because a lot of these different forages that we're feeding do have different nutrient contents. And of course we always want to make sure that we're still meeting our horse's nutrient requirements and feeding them appropriately.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (13:31):

Yeah. We don't want to become a mad scientist .

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (13:34):

That's right. That's right. And the other component of that, of thinking about forage quality. So, you brought up the excellent point of looking at relative feed value or RFV, which will oftentimes come on some of these forage analyses that we get back. And part of the calculation of that does include some of the chemical fiber components of the diet. That's why that value is very useful value or can be useful as one of the criteria that we use to evaluate that quality. But you also brought up things like maturity, and this is where horse owners need to learn themselves somewhat. They need to learn what do we really mean about the maturity of that forge? What does that mean? And I always think back, one of my early studies here at Penn State was some research we did looking at teff hay. So, we did a study where we looked at three different maturities of teff hay. Now I'm not going to get into the details of teff hay, but it is actually, it's an African grass originally from Ethiopia and it can be a very good hay for horses. But it changes drastically with its maturity. So, we had a late maturity, a mid maturity and an early mature teff hay. And the differences in that hay that you could see and that you could feel were incredible.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (14:57):

Almost like different types of hay.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (14:59):

Yes. The early maturity teff hay had lots of leaf, not much stem. It was so soft that my students often fell asleep on the bales of early maturity teff hay. I mean it was, it was like a bed. It was so, so soft. Really, really nice. Okay. And the horses of course loved that. It also had a very high protein content and that sort of thing, very digestible. Then the mid maturity that was kind of, you know, what you would typically expect of hay that we're feeding to horses today. Many horse owners would've looked at that and said, oh yeah, that's just a grass hay. It had more stem, less leaf. Then the late maturity, I made a mistake here and the late maturity was quite stemy. It had a little bit less leaf. Nobody wanted to lay down on those bales because it was pretty pokey.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (15:47):

Okay, theywouldn't have been comfortable. And one of the horses I had about a three to five day transition that I was making for the horses onto these different diets. So, all the horses got fed all the different types of hay and one of my horses got impaction colic when we switched them to that late maturity teff hay. And that was because the digestibility of it, well this is my theory, the digestibility of it was much less that horse was consuming that. And it had an impaction in his pelvic flexor in one of the later regions of its colon because it wasn't able to digest that late maturity teff hay very well. I hadn't given enough of a transition for that horse to be able to do that. Not specifically free fecal water, but certainly, you know, again what we're talking about here are the changes in the fiber fractions just in that one type of grass hay that were very important. So, I think that quality, that late maturity was a lower quality, whereas the early and mid maturity, they were different types of quality.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (16:45):

And there's probably a place for all three of those in horse diets depending on the individual needs of those horses. And you know, that's not something we're talking about today, but as I kind of like to think about it, there is a hay for every horse from the fat metabolic pony to the thoroughbred racehorse on the track. And they are going to look different, but there is a hay for every horse. You said something that reminded me of, of something about maturity too and being pokey that's actually a good way for horse owners to recognize overly mature hay. And some of the funny little asides I like to make and lectures that I give sometimes is if, you know, if you wouldn't want to roll around in your hay, you probably shouldn't feed it to your horse because it, and like you made the point, it could maybe lead to impaction colic, you know, that super mature super stemmy, high structural fiber or high lignin content, if you even want to get specific about it, that can be problematic in some situations. Anything else about the diet that we haven't covered? I mean I started out saying don't start with supplements, but maybe we should end with supplements because as anybody knows who's ever walked into a feed store or gone on the internet and searched gut or gastric health supplements or gut health supplements, , there's a million of them out there. Are there some that are useful in this scenario, would you say?

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (18:02):

So? Yes. And I will say again, you and I have known each other for a long time, so we've certainly talked about some of these in the past. So, I want to hear your comments on these as well, because I know you have opinions. The first one that comes to mind are some of the soluble fiber sources and that sort of thing. So, things like psyllium and what's the other one that we talked about?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (18:24):

Chia seeds.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (18:24):

That's right. Yes, of course. And I think that these, as I look on the continuum of fiber, these are on one end of that continuum where you've got some different fiber molecules and I say soluble, they literally are soluble. They're not the long physically effective fiber.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (18:42):

They're the cream of wheat .

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (18:43):

Right? They're in my glass of water here, they're going to disappear, but they're going to form like a gel that can be very protective to the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. And they're also an important source of fiber for some of the microbes that are living there. So, they can be very helpful in maintaining that healthy microbiome. So, I think that that would be another tool, another fiber tool that I would have.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (19:07):

I'm glad we started there. And in terms of quantity, because I know probably somebody's thinking about that, okay, if I'm going to feedpsylliumor chia, like how much should I feed? It's not a tablespoon. I will tell you that I'm looking at more like a half a cup to a cup a day is what I usually like to recommend. Now that's just based on my practical experience. Do you have any other thoughts on quantity?

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (19:27):

I don't. Yeah, I trust your practical experience there.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (19:30):

Okay, there you go.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (19:32):

You know, and again, I think it's one potential tool to incorporate in.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (19:36):

It's a tool. That's right.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (19:38):

The other one, again, I think we can't go without talking about pre and probiotics. And so, thinking about this, of course again, I'm in my ivory tower here at Penn State. And so, when I think about prebiotics, I generally, I mean for me, I could define almost everything as a prebiotic in some sense. Much of the fiber.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (19:57):

Even oat fiber right, is a prebiotic.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (20:00):

Exactly. So, the human nutritionist definition of prebiotics would be somewhat different and would be more technical and specific. But ultimately prebiotics are nutrients that we're feeding for the purpose of feeding the microbes, not necessarily the horse. So, we're, we're giving these nutrients to the microbes and then hoping for a healthy microbial population. That's a prebiotic, a probiotic is literally feeding the live populations of microbes that we hope will populate or have some impact in the gastrointestinal tract of the horse. And I think that this is a, seems like forever emerging field, but it makes a lot of sense to me that those microbes are absolutely critical to the appropriate digestion of everything the horse is eating. And there is no doubt in my mind that the microbial population is an important part of this idea of free fecal water syndrome. So, I would imagine if you look at a horse that has free fecal water syndrome versus one that doesn't, they may have different populations.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (21:01):

Or if we look at a horse that has free fecal water syndrome in the winter and doesn't have it in the summer, the microbial population may be different. That microbial population may just be an indicator of a change in the diet that is resulting in the free fecal water, but it's a part of the entire problem and what's going on there. So, you know, if I had done all the other things and I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll try a probiotic, I certainly could see a situation where somebody supplementing with a probiotic was like, oh, it solved the problem for me. Great.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (21:32):

Yes. Congratulations. Right. One last thing about that. As you're, you know, as horse owners are considering supplements, I always like to remind them to please try to look for research backed supplements. They're few and far between, but they do exist. They absolutely exist. And kind of the gold standard would be research conducted in horses on that specific probiotic strain or that specific yeast strain. You know, if you're talking about prebiotics or we didn't mention postbiotics, but that's out there too. But basically a postbiotic is a little bit like what comes after the fermentation of the microbes and what they produce. But there's some research backed supplements specifically for gut health there in horses as well. So, look for research in horses or at least like on the ingredients and other species that would lean towards that. This has some efficacious activity in horses because there's an awful lot of gut health supplements out there that have absolutely no science behind them at all. And so that's just my caution, try to find something that's got a little bit of research behind it if you can.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (22:36):

I agree.

 

Katy Starr (22:37):

So, if the hindgut then is central to horse health and performance, what would you guys say are the most important things that horse owners maybe accidentally do that kind of put hindgut health at risk?

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (22:52):

There's probably a lot of things. Sometimes I feel like a broken record as an equine nutritionist, but I think not thinking about forages as the base foundation of their horses diet, not understanding how absolutely important that forage is. I realize that comes with a lot of difficulties and struggles for a whole host of different people. But I think starting there and and understanding, okay, what the base of the diet really needs to be and incorporating that forage into the diet is important. I think not studying and understanding the integration between how horses evolved, eating out in pastures for 14 to 18, they weren't pastures , just grasslands for 14 to 18 hours of the day and sort of metered feeding and I say through the day, it's not like they slept all night long. They'd be grazing some during the night, you know, and sort of spreading those 18 hours of grazing out through somewhere between the 24 hours.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (23:54):

And now we have domesticated horses and we tend to do more meal feeding with them, which is natural. We should do that. It's okay if I could choose, I would choose to feed more meals. I would move from one meal to two meals. If I could move from two meals to four meals, I would do so. I don't think I'd go any more than that. And there are plenty of horse owners that are like, yeah, sorry, I can't feed more than two meals. That's what I've got to do. Right. Great. So, let's think about, are there ingenious human thought things that you can do that will spread your horses feeding out more because you can't be there all the time. Maybe you want to get really fancy and get some sort of meter device that's going to meter out a little bit of food for your horse all the time. Great. If you've got the money and want to do that, that could be a useful thing.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (24:44):

Look if you have a horse with no teeth and that all they can eat is pelleted feed, that's actually not a bad option because even four meals a day, if they're only able to eat pelleted feed, maybe five or six would be even better.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (24:57):

And those things are available.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (24:58):

They are available. Yeah, and I've seen people make their own. I mean I'm sure you could figure that out too if you're handy.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (25:04):

But there are also a million, I mean you know, again, I'm going to say the word nibble net, but like there's a million, a million different ways of feeding forage out there.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (25:12):

Slow feeders. Mm-Hmm

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (25:14):

That will slow down how horses are eating it and will allow them to consume it over a longer period of time. So, you're asking Katy, I am sort of saying forage then I'm saying not meal feeding, trying to get away from meal feeding to a certain degree. I think that's another thing that could be helpful. And then I'm also going to say, and then I want to hear what Dr. Vineyard says, being careful with non-structural carbohydrates. So, I talked a lot about structural carbohydrates. I'm not going to spend forever getting into non-structural carbohydrates except to say that,

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (25:43):

Sugars and starches are what you're saying.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (25:46):

Right. Yeah it's sugars and starches and so those have their place and they can be very useful for our equine athletes, but not feeding too much of them. And if we have a horse with free fecal water, I might look at, okay, what's, what's the non-structural carbohydrate content of this horse's diet? Can I reduce that a little bit? Because that might be helpful in adjusting things like the pH in the gastrointestinal tract, adjusting the microbial population in the gastrointestinal tract, adjusting the water content of the gastrointestinal tract. So, those are places that I might be looking for mistakes.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (26:19):

There's not a lot to add to that. I would say, we touched on it earlier too, about slow transitions. I'm really big on that because I always like to say microbes don't like change, but most people are very conscious of that when they talk about their concentrates and their, you know, grain meals for example. But they don't think about slow transitions with hay as much. But I always say hay counts too. And actually there's been some epidemiological studies in colic incidents of horses and the number one dietary reason or risk factor of colic is actually a hay change within the last 14 days. Not a concentrate change, hay change. And so that's been identified in a couple studies. So, don't forget about slow transition of hay, especially if you're switching from, you know, say like an orchard grass to a timothy or something that's more different.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (27:11):

But slow changes can help minimize the impact on the hindgut. Another thing is stress. You know, we talked about stress earlier and being sure to, I think maybe a mistake would be underestimating the effects of stress on horses GI health, stress can be manifested in a lot of ways in your horse. Some horses internalize stress, so it's hard to see on the outside if they're stressed. But if, you know, if you feel like they're competing at mealtime, especially in a group setting, that can be extremely stressful for horses even being stalled next to an aggressive horse, a horse lower on the totem pole may find that really stressful. So, maybe even changing a little bit of your management can help manage stress or you know, maybe a horse needs a buddy or needs a different buddy or, or something like that. There's just all sorts of different things. And then obviously management of like handlers that there's all sorts of different types of stress that's been identified with handling methods. So, just kind of take a minute to consider your horse's experience of stress in their life and if there's ways you might can mitigate that. But yeah, those are some of the highlights I would say.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (28:16):

I agree.

 

Katy Starr (28:17):

That's excellent. So, as we kind of start to wrap this episode up, I mean you've kind of discussed some great things for horse owners to kind of just pay attention to and make sure that they're addressing within the feeding and management of their horses. Are there any key takeaways or any other points that you guys would like to make before we kind of wrap up this episode on free fecal water syndrome?

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (28:41):

For me, key takeaways are at the top of my list, I would hope that somebody listening to this and horse owners begin to look at, again, you guys kind of pointed it out as something that I say, but look at dietary fiber as a tool that they can use. And you know, we're talking about free fecal water today. So, we're talking about fiber as a tool, dietary fiber as a tool to be used to address that problem. But the fact of the matter is fiber is, while forage is foundational to the horse's diet, fiber is foundational to the horse's diet. So, it can be used for a whole host of things. So, learn more about fiber, learn about the complexities of different types of fiber. One of the things as a nutritionist that is hard when I'm talking to horse owners is there are so many terms that get thrown around that are confusing that horse owners don't fully understand.

 

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (29:35):

You know, non-structural carbohydrates, structural carbohydrates, fiber, what are these things? Try to, to get an understanding of those and begin to learn it. The more you learn about how to differentiate. Like for example, we talked about soluble fiber today, I would tell people, so psyllium I believe is exactly the same as what most of our people will understand as Metamucil. So, what is Metamucil like? Why do people consume that? You know, learn about fiber, learn about soluble fiber, insoluble fiber, we didn't talk at all today, which is a little disappointing about fermentation of fiber and slow and medium and rapid fermentation of fiber. And Dr. Vineyard mentioned very briefly butyric acid, but you know, talking about volatile fatty acids. So, what's the take home message for me? It's learn more about fiber and appreciate how you as an owner can use the range of different dietary fiber sources you have to address a problem like free fecal water. Use that as a tool. It's a great tool that's available to you.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (30:39):

And I guess I could just follow up, and this is my brain. I just am thinking about this as you're talking and I like to put myself in the position as a horse owner. I mean, I am a horse owner and I always as a nutritionist too, that's very practically oriented. I think of, well what's the practical application of this? How can I use different types of fiber as a management tool? And honestly, that's where Standlee bagged forages come in. That's where the Standlee compressed forages, the different beet products. There's a huge range of different fiber types in different types of physical forms and that's kind of Standlee's specialty, right? And I keep thinking about that as like, that's one practical step I can take is, you know, look at what's available to me. And you know, at the feed store with these kind of bagged forages kind of as an umbrella term, if you're not able to kind of just source like long stem hay where you live, you know, you've got access to, you know, some of these Standlee products that have got the processing, they've got the different types of fiber.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (31:43):

Some of the products like the support has the technology, depending on what your horse needs, it might be different for every horse. There's not one specific product that's going to work, but you have access to different types to kind of experiment around to find that management tool that works in your scenario.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (32:00):

And I think I want to highlight one of the benefits and advantages that horse owners would have in using a product like that is they know a little bit more and are guaranteed a little bit more of the quality.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (32:12):

Yes, quality and consistency.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (32:12):

So, when you're going and purchasing that, you know a little bit more, there's a company that's behind, okay, we've evaluated quality, we've put this in a bag, we've put it in a product. And that's not to say you can't go and buy plenty of good forage products, but just from an ease of use and making it a little bit easier, it may be a little bit more expensive to do that, but you're paying for that ease of use and that feeling of like, okay, this is a good quality product by doing that.

 

Katy Starr (32:39):

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. Dr. Staniar, I know that you keep busy with research and teaching and everything, but how can our listeners stay connected with you after this episode if they wanted to?

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (32:52):

The easiest thing is to look me up at Penn State. They can certainly, if they type in Staniar at Penn State, they're going to find me and find some of the things that we're doing. I am busy here, you know, I do a lot of research and teaching, so I work with the students we have here. We have a wonderful equine science program. And really, you know, one of the ways I hope I am able to have some impact is through the students that graduate from Penn State having been involved with both the classes that we teach here. But also one of the things that I have always tried to do is to involve those students in the research that we do. So, a lot of them will, they'll laugh if any of them listen to this or see anything with this because they've been the ones out there in the barn counting how many times the horses are chewing or they're using the Penn State particle separator to look at the different distribution of fiber size in the diets, or they're measuring how long the horses take to eat the diets that they're consuming. So, that's where I am, that's what I do. And that's what I do every single day.

 

Katy Starr (33:50):

That's excellent. And we'll be sure to go ahead and put your email in our show notes and the link to your website there too. That way if they wanted to reach out to you, it's easy to find. But to our listeners today, thank you so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed and felt like you got a lot of value from this conversation and understanding free fecal water syndrome a little bit better than you did before we started the episode. So, if you have any questions that you wanted to reach out to us with, please do that. If you have other topic ideas that you want us to talk about on the podcast, you can reach out at podcast@standlee.com. And Dr. Vineyard and Dr. Staniar, thank you so much for joining us today on this topic. It was great having you on.

 

Dr. Burt Staniar (34:30):

Thank you for having me.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (34:32):

Well thank you. I learned so much too from Dr. Staniar, so I really appreciate your perspective. This has been great.

 

Katy Starr (34:37):

Awesome. Thanks for listening to the Beyond the Barn podcast by Standlee Forage. We'd love for you to share our podcast with your favorite people and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite listening platform. Until next time, keep your cinch tight and don't forget to turn off the water.